Yesterday on August 3, Ama Adhe breathed her last breath in Dharamsala. She was 88. Ama Adhe, known mostly for enduring twenty-seven years of her life in prison, represents the resistance and brutalization showcased and suffered by Tibetans of her time. Her story reflects the larger political question of Tibet and Tibetan people and the extended range of people who…
China’s dam-building threatens to choke off the flow of one of India’s most important rivers Both the 12th and 13th Five-Year Plans adopted by the Chinese State Council have called for large-scale expansion of hydropower projects in the southwest, including all three provinces of Tibet. The Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra River) is one of the main international rivers identified for hydropower expansion in Tibet. Jiacha…
In the run-upto to the 20th Party Congress expected to be convened in late 2022, the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas witnessed a high-level leadership transfer/promotion. Yan Jin Hai (b.1962) has been transferred to TAR from Qinghai province (link in Chinese) and Ding Ye Xian has been transferred to Qinghai province from TAR (link in Chinese)….
With the U.S. State Department announcing its new visa restrictions on Tuesday against Chinese officials involved in restricting American citizens and officials from entering Tibetan areas, their disagreement on the Tibet issue has yet again captured the spotlight. The retaliatory move under the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018 is a part of recent wave of decisions by the…
For Tibetans-in-exile, WeChat has been a primary mode of communication with their loved ones inside Tibet. Recently, the Government of India’s Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology banned 59 Chinese apps including WeChat, TikTok, Mi Community and UC browser, saying that they are prejudicial to India’s sovereignty, integrity and national security. This one-of-a-kind blanket ban on Chinese technology companies comes in the…
As the Dalai Lama turns 85 this year, his dedication towards the environment has not dimmed in the slightest. “I was born in a small village called Taktser, in the northeast of Tibet, on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Wood Hog year of the Tibetan calendar, that is, in 1935,” writes the Dalai Lama in his…
China warned India that it will open new fronts in the Himalayas soon after the violent face-off took place between Chinese and Indian soldiers in Ladakh along the Indo-Tibetan border, which will cost heavy load for both India and China. At the height of coronavirus crisis in the world, all the media have focused on China’s military aggressions in Ladakh…
Chinese netizens have begun using images, and memes in particular, to spread information about the COVID outbreak. The novel coronavirus pandemic, which has spread beyond the borders of mainland China has brought the world to a screeching standstill, with the global infection count swelling to upwards of 9.5 million people having already left 4,85,740 dead. During the initial reports on the…
A Massive flood on 17 June, 2020 due to torrential rainfall in the last few days has affected many parts of Rongdrak County in eastern Tibet. The flood caused landslides as rivers gushed through the region, destroying homes, schools and monasteries located along the extremely narrow valley. There has been similar floods back 2017, coincidentally almost on the same day…
While we celebrate the World Refugee Day, a Tibetan scholar reflects on the history and resilience of 150,000 Tibetan refugees living in exile. June 20, 2020 is World Refugee Day. The United Nations designated this day to remember the refugees around the world, and to remind ourselves of how we all could work together to restore the rights and dignity…
The year 2020 will be remembered as one of the most disturbing times in human history. The Covid-19 virus that had its origin in the Wuhan region of China has devastated lives, crippled economies, and brought the world to a screeching standstill. In December 2019 the news emerged of the first human infection with this coronavirus, with the World Health…
2020 will be remembered not only for the COVID – 19 pandemic that has effectively brought large sections of global society to a screeching standstill but also for the fundamental changes it has induced in the field of communication. Once the domain of the physical realm, interaction between individuals has increasingly been cornered by the virtual and throughout 2020, the…
Amid escalating tensions between US and China, the pressure intensified after US Congressman Scott Perry introduced a Bill (H.R. 6948) that would “authorize the President to recognize the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China as a separate, independent country”. A perfunctory read of the Bill might seem like it poses a direct challenge to China’s sovereign claim…
On 29 May 2020, during a nationally televised debate on the Indo-China border face-off, Phunchok Stobdan, a former Ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic, made an unnecessary and crudely-worded assault on His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The nature of the attack and the manner in which it was made has shocked diplomats and scholars and has hurt the sentiments not just…
31 years ago the world bore witness to the ideological rupture between the Communist State in China and its citizenry that led to the iconic image of a man standing in front of a tank, a day after China’s military troops had brutally suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests, leaving thousands dead and injured, and silencing the last major movement for…